WAR BABIES

Evening Star, Issue 23376, 20 September 1939, Page 13

WAR BABIES

" Those days in September. T.W*. known as tin; ‘ crisis,’ when from liuiir to hour the tension tightened, so that the whole country was ravaged by the terror of war, had special significance for the war babies,” writes Mrs Cecil Chesterton. ” The lurking fears of the subconscious suddenly released tore at their impaired resistance. Moreover, the absence of any kind of official organisation, authorised programme, or Government policy increased their nervous panic.

“To any man or woman of the civilian pojmlation who lived through the last war, the hysteria which convulsed certain sections of the community during these recent days seemed appalling. Most of the older people of all classes stood firm. The majority of younger men who had just escaped birth during the critical years of 1914-18 were steady but inflamed by continual broadcasts couched in terms of warning and menace which disrupted contingents of the more prosperous middle classes, who literally broke at the prospect of attack.” Referring to the argument that “the Fuhrer has produced the finest youth in the world,” she says:— “ I have repeatedly heard it said by visitors returning from a tourist stay in the Reich that never have there been such splendid girls, such superb boys. Once more tbe short memory of onr time seems to have wiped away nil record of the German youth of previous generations.' Who remembers the Wandervogel of post-war days, when troops of girls and boys, tall, upstanding, blonde and beautiful, tramped all over Europe preaching a mission of eternal peace?

“ 1 recall a moonlight evening in Prague, when the tragic fate meted out to her by Chamberlain and Hitler was undreamt of. I was with a party of friends on the roof of the world—a cafe on the city walls high above the bouses.

“ Suddenly came the sound of singing, piercing, ecstatic, some hundred strong. Wandervogel in coloured shirts and shorts, with knapsacks and sticks

marched into our midst. They sang and sang, chanting the universal brotherhood and concord that nation had with nation. They were just as superb physically speaking as their young brothers and sisters of to-day. ft is part of their birthright. One might as well say that Hitler has taught the Germans to sing as that he has created a new physical typo of youth. “ And now, no longer allowed to go about together, boys and girls sing the song of salvation by war, that only on the battlefield can Germany fulfil herself. They have forgotten the hymn of universal peace and brotherhoqd. “It is no secret that families of wealth, traditional standing and prestige, openly applaud the Hitler regime, which they desire with all their hearts might come to England. It is, I think, nob so much love of the Nazis in Germany, as fear of the dispossessed at homo. They think in the loose fashion which determines the thought of the very rich, that under dictatorship their wealth would be secure.

“ ‘ I can’t understand it.’ said an intelligent young student to me, newly returned from Germany. ‘ I was at a big party the other evening, and everyone was buzzing with the way in which Hitler had solved unemployment. You know,’ the young man went on, ‘ he hasn’t solved it.

“ ‘ I speak German very fluently. I have a good many friends all over the place, and by listening hard, and speaking little, I have found out a great deal. To begin with, thousands of people are employed on what one may call half or quarter-time. Big employers of labour are forbidden to sack anyone of Aryan blood. When slack times come along, and there are not enough orders to keep the place

open, the work is spread out very thin, and wages arc to match. This keeps up employment figures, and no one outside the country knows what is happening.’ •• 1 The wages,’ ho went on, are supplemented by contributions from the Nazis’ funds. The party collects a large percentage—sometimes as much us 75 per cent, from the capitalists. The money does not go to the State, but the party and a portion is used to supplement the meagre amount drawn by part-time workers. Again, in municipal or State work, where one man could do the job efficiently, four Nazis are employed. They all draw full pay for very little work, and Hitler receives the credit through the prosperity statistics. You must remember,’ he said, ‘ I am not taking into consideration the nonproductive labour instituted by Hitler; I am confining myself to the figures issued on the total of unemployment. “ This contention as to using four brownshirts when one would do, is borne out by what I saw myself on the Dutch-German frontier. At one place the outposts are a few hundred yards from each other, and what happens on the German side is visible from the Dutch. Precisely the same amount of traffic passes through the two Cntsoms houses, but, whereas three officials were quite able to cope with the business on the Dutch side, at least 20 brownshirts staffed the opposite number. . . .”